Rabbi Howard Morrison

While spending a brief vacation in New York city, I attended Shabbat morning services at Ansche Chesed, where a childhood friend and her family go to shul. After services, while standing in the coatroom about to leave, I remarked to a shul member how nice it was for me to sit with the congregation and be a "Jew in the pew." A woman, upon overhearing my comment, asked me if I was a visiting pulpit rabbi, to which I affirmed her comment. After a brief conversation with her, the woman then remarked that our chance encounter was "Min Hashamayim," literally, "from heaven," meaning that God meant for this encounter to happen.

I had never met her before, but I knew a little bit about her late husband. Nava Harlow was married to Rabbi Jules Harlow, Zichrono Li'Veracha, of blessed memory. When Nava mentioned her name to me, I asked if she was Rabbi Harlow's wife, which she affirmed. When I was an undergraduate student in Boston before attending rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Harlow was the very first Seminary scholar I had ever heard in person. I had been invited to a retreat at Camp Tel Noar in New Hampshire sponsored by the New England region of the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs. Rabbi Harlow was one of the featured scholars in residence. It was there that I heard his ideological approach to editing Conservative Movement liturgy. Little did I know that his field of expertise was Tefila, prayer, and synthesizing the accepted norms of traditional Jewish prayer with the contemporary needs of the time.

Fast forward. in the mid 1980's when I was a rabbinical student, Rabbi Harlow delivered a lecture on the publication of Siddur Sim Shalom, the first complete (Daily, Sabbath, and Festival) Siddur published by the Conservative Movement. At that time, the ArtScroll company was publishing all kinds of Siddurim with commentaries on the bottom of the page. While Rabbi Harlow advocated for studying commentary in adult education programs, his Siddur did not contain commentary on the page of the prayer text. He strongly maintained the position that a Jew in actual prayer time should focus on the prayer text specifically. Rabbi Harlow's genius was to translate the Hebrew into a rhythmic lyrical style which brought the Hebrew to life in English.

When I served as rabbi of the Wantagh Jewish Center in the 1990's, the shul Siddur was in fact Siddur Sim Shalom. While many Conservative synagogues use this Siddur to the present day, the compact travel-size edition is still used by campers and those traveling. Ultimately, more recent iterations of  Conservative Movement liturgy in which he was not involved, have now augmented the text with historical and contemporary commentaries on the margins surrounding the Hebrew text (see Or Hadash: A commentary on Siddur Sim Shalom and Siddur/Machzor Lev Shalem).

Given the little I knew her husband, Nava regarded our moment at the coat check as a heavenly encounter. Rabbi Jules Harlow had passed away in February of 2024. May his Neshama have an Aliyah in its heavenly abode.

Rabbi Howard Morrison